


starman, waiting in the sky

by senator_princess_general



Series: ~*~gays in space au~*~ [1]
Category: Dalton Academy Series
Genre: Gen, I wrote this while I was falling asleep pls let me live, also this is the first piece of writing i have ever posted pls be gentle :(, alternative title: the trouble with tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24178198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/senator_princess_general/pseuds/senator_princess_general
Summary: reunions can be a long time coming, but even when they come after a long battle with an intergalactic tentacle monster, they're still cathartic // shane's origin story
Series: ~*~gays in space au~*~ [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745071
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	starman, waiting in the sky

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to the gays in space au hype squad: joey and annika

Shane loved the smell of space in the morning.

Well, maybe that’s not true. After all, space didn’t smell like anything. And Shane didn’t know what time it was. And he could think of so many places he would rather be than lounging on a meteor in the middle of one of the most dangerous quadrants of the galaxy.

Okay, what he thought was a complete lie, but at least it sounded cool, right?  
  
He had been on this rock for hours now after being dumped here by the last ship he hitchhiked with. He understood _why_ the driver didn’t want to take him all the way to Purdustria, but he wished he was at least dropped off at a place that _wasn’t_ just a boring space rock. Now he needs _another_ ride to Purdustria, and a ship hasn’t past in hours. If he doesn’t act soon, he doesn’t know how the hell he’ll get to his next job.

He resolved to plopping himself down and sending his coordinates from his mechanical wrist monitor for any ship in a 100,000 mile radius, in hopes that some one will stop in the next few hours, or else he’d have to call in another favor with Steven again, and well… he didn’t want to do that. Partially because he didn’t want to owe Steven _again_ on top of all the other times he owed him for by now, and also because he didn’t know how many more hours of Steven’s shitty music he could take. He was an open minded guy but come on, Steven: how could you hate Earth-music sensation Carli Ray-Gun Jetson but listen to to all this Mars-core trash?

But, at least he had a back up plan. Now all he could do was sit and hope for the best while trying to beat his high score in this rhythm game on his wrist.

* * *

“Captain, we’re getting a request to board,” Wes piped up. He turned around in his chair to get the attention of his pacing Captain.

“I haven’t seen a ship in a thousand miles,” started Captain Amos. He stood at the side of the flight deck, peering out the window with the stoicism of a lion, taking in the uncharted beauty of the area. “And, there is nothing ahead of us until we get to the Purdustria quadrant. No sane ship would pass through this part of the galaxy.” That warranted a snicker from the twins.

“Well, Captain, it’s not a ship.” That piqued Captain Amos’ interest. He strolled over to the lieutenant’s screen.

“Oh?” He asked, eyebrow raised.

“We got coordinates dropped from a single person. A hitchhiker parked on a nearby asteroid.”

“Alright then, what’s the guy looking like?” Wes began to manically type to extract the identification card that came with coordinates. Nothing.

“Uhh, somehow no card on file with the I.D.B., sir,” said Wes, “he’s looking for safe and fast passage to Purdustria, where we’re headed.”

“Activate the ship cameras, he can’t be far.”

Wes did so, pulling up an ever-slightly-enhancing photo of a lanky figure, perched casually on a jagged rock. Charlie used his fingers to zoom in on the touch-pad screen. It appeared the figure was playing with his wrist monitor, which seemed innocent enough, but Charlie couldn’t help but examine other details. No logos or brands found on the humanoid, face completely submerged behind a mechanical black mask with a single dark green lens shaped like a thin cross, but they were still too far out to see behind it. He had a hood pulled up over his head. Completely anonymous.

“Don’t let them on,” Charlie commanded. “Could be an assassin. You don’t see many people around the galaxy looking like that with no notable identifying marks now, do you? And in this part of the universe? Why, only the most unhinged of beings would find themselves stuck here.”

“Aye, Captain,” answered Wes, denying the response to the stranger’s request. 

Charlie stood back up and started back to the center of the room and his control center. He checked the time and took his PA speaker in hand. “Alright this is a message to the Hearts force. Set to deploy on Purdustria in about say, three Earth hours. This mission will be dangerous so be prepared to deploy in your heavy gear. We don’t want to lose any one of you.”

* * *

_‘Go to Purdustria’, they said._ Shane thought to himself as he darted down the shaking metal halls of the ship. The lights strobed at a blinding level. With every beam of light, Shane could make out viscous, crystalline discharge seeping out of the walls. ‘ _bag the Criniqui the bastards have captive on their ship’ they said. ‘it will be FINE’ they said._

A cacophonous roar rattled the ship further, knocking Shane to the ground. He saw the discharge getting and closer to the ground and scrambled back onto his feet as fast as he could. So much as one drop of the stuff on your skin would instantly begin to rot your limb, and well… Shane only had three of those left. He wasn’t taking any chances.

All he needed to do was find an exit. Anything. Anywhere. He already botched the mission, and he wasn’t going to die over it. No matter how big the price on the Criniqui’s head was.

Another roar, this time even louder and more guttural, and when Shane turned behind him, he began to see thick magenta colored tentacles increasingly fill the doorway. It was getting bigger and faster. Shane was told these things were bred to grow when threatened, and given that Shane dripped the lethal serum he was told will kill it into the wrong opening in the creature’s body, he understands why it might be just a little defensive. This thing won’t stop until it overtakes this ship and kills itself—and thus Shane too. It had already killed the notorious gangsters on the ship in response to Shane’s attacks, which at least Shane can’t complain about amid all this chaos. He wondered if he made it out alive if he could somehow collect a bounty for their heads rather than the Criniqui’s.

He turned a corner and kept running. He saw shadows form of the being behind him. He was running out of time. As he turned another corner, he noticed a saving grace. Before him, at the end of the hallway were two passages: one left and one right. Zooming in with the technology in his helmet, he could make out an airlock sign on the left. He could get out.

But no sooner had he noticed that sign, he saw a thin pink tentacle shoot into the hallway from the right. Immediately came two more tentacles, then five more, building and braiding together until it amassed and began to fill the hallway. _Fuck_ , he thought.

He only had one option left. He took off his black glove and clenched his metal fist, summoning a great beam of emerald light within it. As the tentacles got closer, he remained as still as he could, focusing all of his energy and adrenaline into his palm. The walls around him began to shake more and more vehemently, and so did his arm, the black fabric around his wrist falling to tatters. Sweat poured down his face and while his body began to feel cold, his arm felt like it was about to burst with fire.

And as the tentacles in front of him became only feet away, he extended his arm and released his hand, sending an ocean of green light ahead of him so intense that it shattered his robotic hand.

He felt faint. Keeping his body upright was a struggle. His vision dangerously blurred, but no pink laid before him anymore. All he had to do was get to the end of the hall and then—

“ _Shit”_

He heard the airlock open and several soldiers flock inside.

“What the hell was that?” one of them said.

“I’ve never seen something like that” said another, similar voice.

“How much do you think it would cost to get whatever that was installed into the ship?”

“No, how much do we have to beg Cap’n Amos to let us install it?”  
  
“GO! MOVE” Another voice boomed. “Keep running! Whatever that was cleared passage directly to the gill opening. Move! We don’t have much time!”

“But we _just_ got here—”  
  
“DO YOU WANT TO DIE TODAY, TWEEDLES?”

 _Tweedles?_ Shane thought groggily. There’s no way that’s a group sanctioned by the Intergalactic Council. Suddenly remembering the monster still growing behind him, he began to ungracefully trudge towards the opening once he gauged that the soldiers no longer stood near it. Every step began feeling increasingly painful, almost as if the wires connecting the arm to his body began shocking him from the inside; his muscles weren’t strong enough to keep it attached much longer.

 _Come on, body._ He thought. _If you could escape that Magstilus a few months ago or even that wicked four week hangover from the Pars quadrant, you can do this. Just a little more._

Suddenly, the ship stopped shaking. The walls stopped oozing, the lights stopped strobing, and Shane felt the entire place get lighter as he watched the tentacles shrivel up. He finally turned the corner and put his hand on the airlock, and then he heard the igniting of blasters charging.

“ _Don’t move,”_ he heard one of them say. So odd. Maybe Shane was delirious, but he swore he knew that voice.

Just as he was trapped mere moments ago, here he was trapped again. But hey, being arrested beat being dead. Maybe he’d even luck out and be thrown in the same maximum-security prison as his old pal Linda.

Still dizzy and without a second hand to balance himself, he took his hand off the door and lifted his hand, hoping not to topple over. What a first impression that would be. He lifted his arms as a sign of defeat and turned around, and in that moment, he fell to his knees.

His brother stood in front of him, looking exactly as he did since the last time he saw him, albeit, much sweatier and with a few more marks tattooed on his head, honors from various planets from his missions. Shane let out a sigh of disbelief.

“Silence,” Blaine commanded, still pointing his blaster. He really had gotten more commanding in the past five years. “My name is Blaine Anderson of planet Veta Lenta 7. I am here as acting leader of this crew acting on the command of Captain Amos. State your name, business, and where that green light came from.”  
  
“B-Blaine,” Shane made out. He was starting to lose consciousness. He giggled again. “You’re just as short as I remembered.”  
  
As slow as he could muster, he gently moved his trembling hand to his robotic wrist and flicked a switch, retracting his helmet and revealing his face to the group.

“Shane,” the other said with wide eyes, lowering his blaster.

And Shane fell unconscious with a delirious smile on his face.

* * *

Shane woke to the sound of his own heartbeat. His eyes peeled open slowly, and he found himself in a sterile metal room painted a light, cool blue. His heartbeat was being echoed on a nearby monitor. Was this the afterlife he had been hearing preached so much about?

“Where-”

Before he could even get another word out, he was crushed by an embrace. Blaine held him so tightly Shane swore the few ounces of energy he had at all were now drained out of him again. He felt tears swell into his eyes as he became overcome with emotion. Five long years of being on his own, and now he could hold his brother again. He thought he would have died before this could ever happen again.

“Shane,” Blaine said. Shane could tell he was crying too. “Where have you been?”

“Everywhere and nowhere,” he responded, chuckling while tears streamed down his face. “I’ve seen and done enough for a lifetime, but you know me. I’m always down for more” He pulled back and placed his hand on Blaine’s face. “You’ve clearly lived more justly than I have,” he said, gesturing to his brother’s tattoo markings and then to his own long scars filled with metal in his torso and the remnants of his metal arm. “Do you think you could fix this?”

“Where in the universe did you get that thing?”

“I lost my arm to a Magstilus months ago. The man who hired me at the time paid for it, though I don’t think it was made with necessarily _legal_ technology. But, hey! Who am I to complain. It has games on it.”

“Yeah, and an energy beam that could injure a seemingly indestructible monster. Our on-deck scientists are analyzing it now, and it is nothing either of them have ever seen.”

Blaine let him go, smiling wide. They’ll talk about their pasts some other time. Here they were, together for the first time in years. Nothing mattered but this moment right now. It became apparent to them that nothing in the known universe was more powerful than the feeling of reunion.

“Hey, he’s awake!” Wes exclaimed as he happened to pass by. He excitedly opened up the glass door, and in swarmed crew members, some of which were on the mission while others were not.

“So, much for a touching reunion, guys,” Blaine said, rolling his eyes. “Everyone, this is my brother, Shane.” He looked back to Shane. “Shane, this is the crew of the Wonderland Space Craft.”

Before Shane could even respond, two identical boys pushed themselves in.

“A new recruit!” chimed one of them with the excitement of a child.

“We can always use more hands for missions! A well-travelled being is always exciting!” continued Ethan. Shane instantly recognized their voices as the ones on the Purdustria ship earlier.

“I think that’s for Captain Amos and Shane to decide, guys,” Blaine said.

“What Cap’n doesn’t know won’t hurt him!”

“Yeah, just put that boy in one of our suits and he’ll blend right in. Even with the arm.”

“I’m sure we have a spare uniform around here!”

“Yeah! Reed’s been working tirelessly in the hull. That boy works fast. Hard to believe he-”

“What’s this about me?”

The group turned around, and Reed turned the corner. He stretched and walked towards Shane’s room where the group had gathered.

“Nothing. Just that you’re working too hard,” Blaine said.

“I’m taking a break. I thought I would come up to see what all the commotion was. I just suddenly heard a bunch of running footsteps, and the sirens aren’t going off so I know it’s not an emergency.” He locked eyes with Shane, who felt his heart stop. Maybe this was the afterlife.

“Hi-”

“I’m Shane,” Shane interrupted, eyes wide and with an awestruck tone. Never in his past five years of traversing the galaxy had ever seen something- or some _one_ \- as beautiful as the one that stood in front of him. Reed was taken aback by the sudden exclamation. “Sorry…” Shane continued. “I’m just… you know-” He cut himself off. “Wow, you’re stunning.”  
  
“Uh, thanks,” Reed said, shifting into a slightly more insecure posture. Shane didn’t even have to look at his brother to know that he was facepalming. “I’m Reed. I’m the ship’s clothing and equipment manufacturer.”  
  
Shane lifted his broken arm and smiled “Think you can design something to fix over this old thing as I get it replaced?”

“I mean, I’ll see what I can do if you’ll be joining us.”

“Oh, I will, Reed,” he looked at his brother and his newfound crew. He had been dreaming of this moment for years. “I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
